Bob Odenkirk has slipped comfortably into the category of unlikely action hero. Just an ordinary guy who, when thrown into extraordinary circumstances, rises to the occasion with a deadpan quip and a lethal ability to stay alive. And so it is with NORMAL, his follow-up to NOBODY and NOBODY 2, wherein he essays Ulysses, a… Read More »
SEND HELP
The fruits of entitlement face off with workers controlling the means of production in Sam Raimi’s scathingly brilliant, and wickedly funny, take on gender politics and economic power, SEND HELP. Sure, we’ve seen this scenario before in THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON, SWEPT AWAY (the Wertmuller version, please), and most recently in TRIANGLE OF SADNESS, which owes… Read More »
PRIMATE
Filmmaker Johannes Roberts absolutely understood the assignment with PRIMATE, a film about a pet chimpanzee turned killer. In any film with that premise, the one thing we all expect is to see is the chimp tearing someone’s face off, the which Ben, the chimp in question, does in the first 5 minutes. Once that trope… Read More »
DEAD OF WINTER
There is much to admire about Emma Thompson in DEAD OF WINTER, not the least of which is the way she captures the cadence and the spirit of the Minnesota accent with the same effortless skill that embodies the rest of her performance. Virtually silent for most of her time on screen, she is simply… Read More »
THE FANTASTIC 4: FIRST STEPS
It is with no small measure of relief that I am able to say Marvel’s THE FANTASTIC 4: FIRST STEPS finally succeeds in bringing one of my childhood favorites to the screen. This iteration centers itself on the lively dynamics of the Richards-Storm-Grimm clan of biological and logical family such that the quartet’s greatest superpower… Read More »
JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH
Right at the beginning of JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH there is a hint that this is a break from the increasingly lackluster sequels to which we have been subjected. It is the moment when we see that Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), the upbeat mercenary of the piece, is recruiting paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) for… Read More »
DANGEROUS ANIMALS
There’s something refreshing about the sharks featured in DANGEROUS ANIMALS >not< being the villains of the piece. Instead, they are presented on their own terms as majestic creatures of the deep who would really, really rather not deal with humans in any way shape or form, and that includes lunch. Instead, we have a human… Read More »
THE KARATE KID: LEGENDS
There are many montages in THE KARATE KID: LEGENDS. So many montages. Training montages. Hanging out montages. More training montages. Montages of flashbacks with narration. Montages of montages of flashbacks. As irksome as it is, it has the virtue of symbolizing the raison-d’etre of this sequel to a sequel to a reboot of a remake.… Read More »
GLADIATOR II
GLADIATOR II has all the spectacle and pageantry (can you say cast of AI thousands?) of its predecessor, and certainly the same amount of gruesome deaths as only Ancient Rome could devise them, but it is a lesser thing story-wise. Not a bad film, but one that comes down firmly on the side of that… Read More »
HERETIC
HERETIC manages to be terrifying because of the very civility each of the characters shows during the slow build-up to the, ahem, crux of the film. This fable for our times is a cleverly disguised dialectic not just on faith, but on the very human need to believe in something in the face of proof,… Read More »
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